


Treat Every Gun as Loaded

by figuline



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figuline/pseuds/figuline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark ends up with Luther's blood all over his hands, and it's not in the way he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treat Every Gun as Loaded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gardinha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardinha/gifts).



Mark ends up with Luther's blood all over his hands, and it's not in the way he expected. Alice stands next to him, playing nursemaid for as long as it will amuse her. He tries to remember his career-demanded first-aid course, but he can't really remember the section on patching up your partner's ex-husband's stab wound from his ex-wife's murderer. Alice passes him another long strip of medical tape and Luther grunts as Mark smooths the tape down, fingertips skimming against Luther's skin, absorbing some of the heat radiating from him.

"That should do," Alice says, finally taking off her knit cap and shaking out her hair. Mark presses down on the gauze pad, and Luther grunts again, waves Mark away. Luther pulls his shirt down, the gauze showing through the jagged hole soaked with red.

"Tea?" Alice asks, holding three mugs and smiling her smile that still makes Mark sure she could eat his heart raw.

Luther nods. Mark wants to make himself stop and think if he's really qualified to make decisions for himself any longer. Even if the blood on his hands is Luther's, he's still complicit. 

He goes to the tiny bathroom next to the kitchen and washes his hands in the skin. The water runs brown briefly, and the soap makes his skin feel dry and tight against his bones. He can recognise the cadence of Alice's speech, and the rumble of Luther's voice accompanying it even through the wall, the boil of the kettle, and the creak of the pipes.

He doesn't even know whose house this is. He doesn't even know if Alice and Luther just judged a house to be empty enough to inhabit with their bodies. There are no mementos on the living room shelves, no family photographs or ceramic bric-à-brac. There's only a plant he thinks must have been recently watered until he rubs a leaf between forefinger and thumb and finds it made of heavy, waxy plastic.

Someone clears their throat behind him. It's Luther, and if it was anyone else Mark might think he was awkward, nervous, but Luther has a tendency to push through space and let hit haphazardly try and put itself back together in his wake.

"Tea's up," he says.

Mark lets go of the plant's leaf and the whole thing quivers as he releases it. He follows Luther back to the kitchen.

"Sugar?" Alice asks. "I'm afraid there's no milk."

"No," Mark says. He's fallen asleep and they're speaking in dead languages. In the morning Zoe will make him coffee and laugh at him and he'll go to work smiling and with toast crumbs in his hair.

Alice hands him the tea and he holds the hot mug in his hand until it stings. Alice takes it away and puts it down on the table. He sits. The steam curls up into his face, into his nose, into his lungs.

The sunlight dims through the windows above the kitchen sink. Luther and Alice are talking still, their voices overlapping each other. Mark holds onto the mug until it goes cold. The light fades away. Alice follows Luther out, running her fingers across his shoulders, across the nape of his neck, her nails scraping his skin.

He turns on the overhead light. It illuminates the hidden corners of the room, the spice rack with the top shelf listing downwards, handwritten labels on the bottles in cursive. Oregano, parsley. The tops are the jars are covered in dust. 

Thunder growls. He leans over the kitchen sink and the curtains exude dust and the smell of disuse. Dark clouds cluster cluster over the skyline. He forces open the sticky window and cool air rushes in, bringing with it the scent of rain, a dog barking in the distance. Bins rattle in the alley behind the garden. He hears a car pull into the lane and tense, because he can't taste anything except complicity on his tongue.

He hears the key in the door and lets his shoulders relax, fissures of pain running up and down his neck. He comes into the hallway as Alice and Luther come in, carrying bags. He smells hot food, and can't stop his mouth watering even as his stomach roils. It's been hours since he last ate. 

"You didn't get followed, did you?" he asks. 

Alice smiles first; at least Luther has the decency to try and hide his, but he can't keep it from reaching his eyes.

"You've been watching too many movies, mate," he says.

Mark's mouth twists. Alice's coat brushes against his skin, passing on the dew that clings to it. Her perfume is muted by the smells of rain, of night. Luther smells the same, but underneath is faded cologne and clean sweat.  
There's a fission of energy between them that snaps around Mark like static. He pauses to watch them in the kitchen, watching them move around each other.

He wonders if they're sleeping together. He wants to tell them Zoe chose me like it holds power. He's wondering if, even though it's a burst of iron in his throat, that maybe Zoe chose Mark because Luther chose Alice.

Zoe was terrified of Alice. Mark always knew that Luther was dangerous, but Alice was a step above. Alice felt like a threat. 

She can't stop smiling her peculiar smile. It's as if she's been waiting for this moment. Waiting to share chicken chow mein with Luther in a stranger's house on the run after avenging his ex-wife's murder.

"Mark," Alice says, like she can tell he's thinking about her. "Don't go hungry out in the hallway."

He sits down. Luther pries the lid off a takeaway container, gets sweet and sour sauce all over his hand. He presses his thumb to his mouth, and Mark watches Alice watch the movement.

The food is hot, if not particularly good. The noodles are slippery with black bean sauce, and Mark struggles with chopsticks, and finally gives in for a spoon. He feels primed after the meal, even though the food sits warm and heavy in his stomach. The rain begins. 

 

Alice clears the table and sets up her laptop. Her fingers fly over the keys too fast for Mark to judge what she's doing. She could be writing her dissertation or levelling up her night elf. 

Luther has vanished, probably to rest, Mark hopes, purely for the sake of his wound. He can't imagine Luther sleeping, can only picture him lying on the narrow bed, on top of the covers, fully clothed with open eyes. Alice is the same; she doesn't seem to have a state apart from catly alert, He can sense her attention on him even with her eyes firmly fixed on her laptop.

His legs are filled with nervous energy. He needs to move around. Half of his concentration is devoted towards attempting to hear the inevitable sirens approaching the house before they get here, and the other is watching Alice and Luther run rings around him.

Mark follows the sound of rain to the back door. There's a step under the overhang of the roof, shielded from the rain. He sits down on the edge of it, the concrete cool even through his jeans. He leans back against the door and tries to release the tension from his muscles and bones. He wants Zoe to press her capable hands against the place where the knots of worry and force them to capitulate. 

When he opens his eyes, there's a ginger and white cat sneaking towards him from its shelter under the eaves. It buts its head against his hand; maybe the owners used to feed it. He scratches behind its ears, finds its sweet spot and it nuzzles into him, tastes his skin. There's a lump in his pocket that he's leaning on, and when he fishes into it he finds cigarettes, a lighter. Zoe's. He must have picked up them up without even realising. He puts one in his mouth but doesn't light it. If he doesn't think about it too much, he imagines that he can taste Zoe's mouth on the filter. 

A light clicks on within the house, and he catches a glimpse of Alice's pale hand flicking out to close the curtains. He watches the light around the curtains dip and fade as Alice walks back and forth in front of the window.

He goes back inside to find some leftover chicken for the cat, but it's gone.

 

There are lights on under two of the bedroom doors. He wonders which one is Luther's, and despite his best efforts, he can't seem to align the geography of the outside house to the inside house. He's too tired, he's in shock, he's --

He tries the knob on the nearest door. It swings open, and he has to blink around the bright light. 

"Mark," Alice says. She's wearing some kind of silky shift pajamas, and of course she had time to pack a little night bag that reminds him of Grace Kelly in Rear Window. Luther probably has a whole suitcase in his room. Mark has nothing. Alice didn't give him a chance to go home and pack in between holding her knife to his throat and leading him to Luther.

"I know what you want to ask," she says. He steps inside, closes the door. If he's quiet, and she's quiet, he can hear or imagine that he hears Luther's breathing from the room next door, as if his breath is a rumble that shakes the house. "You want to ask me why I gave you a choice."

Mark hesitates, keeps his fingertips touching the outside wall like an anchor. 

"You think I'm some kind of homicidal maniac," she says. Her eyes and hair shine in the low light. "You can't conceive why I even offered you a choice. Why didn't I just blow him away because I wanted to?" She makes a little gesture with her hand.

"Because," he says, and the word forces itself between his lips and explodes into the quiet house. "Because I trusted Luther -- because I trust Luther."

Her eyes gleam. She smiles, and he knows that he's pleased her.  
"I liked Zoe," she says. She twirls a jewelled pin in her fingers. "I think, in time, she would have become unafraid." Her shadow cast on the wall is huge. "You trust John," she says. "You were so quick to trust him, after everything." She rolls the pin on her bottom lip, rests it there. "I found that interesting."

He remembers the flurry of blows he laid upon Luther's chest, how he just let Mark hit him, over and over again. He remembers Alice's eyes on his back, until Luther's hands steadied hi, and he said I didn't kill her. He'd known, in that instant, like a glass pane had broken high above them and shone sunlight down on them all. 

Alice won't stop smiling.

He'd believed him instantly. His nature is to ask questions, to make certain of every detail but Luther had said I didn't kill her and Mark had known that it was true. He had known. 

Alice puts her hand on his shoulder. He hadn't even heard her approach. He suppresses the urge to jump, and lets the motion roll through him. He can still hear Luther's measured, even breaths, or imagines that he can. Alice's face is close. He can pick out her individual eyelashes even in the low light. 

"Mark," she says. Her hand slides down to his arm. "Mark."

He pushes her against the wall and kisses her. She breathes against his lips, opens her mouth against his, pushes her teeth against her. He knows that he's pushed her against the adjoining wall that Luther shares, and he can't process the sensation. Her tongue slides against her and her hands flatten against his back, one slides up to the nape of his neck and pulls him against her, and he doesn't want to stop kissing her but he loses the feeling in his legs and his knees go watery. He slides down to them, rests his head on her thigh. She runs her hand through his hair, touches his cheek. He feels like he should be crying, sobbing against her silk pajamas, cursing his own name, but he feels clean. He feels like he's being scraped clean from the inside out.

Alice pulls him back with a smooth jerk to his hair that goes straight to his prick and smiles. She releases him and walks over to the bed. He follows, on his knees, and presses his face to her thigh, to her inner thigh. He exhales, slow, into her leg, and she strokes at her hair. He never figured her for one for physical comfort, but he wants to please her. She hooks a thumb under the elastic of her pajama pants and she's not wearing anything underneath. He kisses the bone of her hip where the skin lies thin, presses his teeth against the bone.

He can sense her breath picking up. He licks at the crease between hip and thigh, works his way down towards her cunt, slips a finger between her folds and finds her clit, rubs it hard for a brief second. Her breath bursts out of her, and she laughs, loud. She hooks her thighs over his shoulders and cants her hips towards him. He parts her labia with his fingers and presses his mouth to her cunt, runs his tongue up and down quickly, lightly, and then swipes hard and slow. He touches her clit with the tip of his finger and pushes back the hood of her clit, presses his tongue against it. Her hips jerk and she moans, loud. 

He hears a thump from next door and hesitates, but Alice doesn't let him. She puts her hand on the back of his head and presses him back in, tugs at his hair in admonishment. He licks her clit until he can feel her thighs tensing around his head and then backs off, gives her long, slow passes up and down, over her hole and clit until she's shivering against him. He backs off further, nips at her thigh and rubs his stubble against her soft skin.

"Mark," she says, but instead of whatever she's about to say, he hears the next bedroom door open, and freezes. Alice laughs instead, and tugs on his hair again. He can feel Luther's footsteps approaching the bedroom door, and his blood flares, kindles in his veins. He parts her labia again, and sucks on her clit, hard. The moan is involuntary, charged, and she sets her nails into his skin. He presses his thumb against her hole, just sets it gently against it, and flicks her clit with his tongue, and she comes, thighs clenching around his head. 

The door opens behind him, but he can't hear what Luther says, if anything. He keeps his tongue on her clit, pressing his thumb gently to her hole, and her muscles tense around him until it's almost painful. He can sense Luther approaching him even without looking.

"John," Alice says, and her voice is full of breath. "John, he's so good."

Luther comes closer, until Mark can almost feel the inches between them, feel the warmth of Luther's body. Luther puts his hand on the back of Mark's neck and it's like he's being branded. Luther pushes him into Alice, pushes him until he almost can't breath between the two of them, and he cooperates, presses the tip of his tongue into her in short thrusts. She gasps.

"Alice," Luther says. "Tell me what he's doing."

"He's good with his tongue," Alice says, and he presses further. She moans. Luther slides his hand along Mark's cheek, finds where his tongue is, and gently nudges his thumb away, and slides a finger into Alice alongside Mark's tongue. She comes again, and then follows with a third, grinding her clit against Mark's face. She subsides, her legs sliding off Mark's shoulders, and exhales long with satisfaction. 

Luther strokes the back of his neck, in long, slow strokes as his own breathing begins to slow. Luther touches Mark's cheek, gently, and runs his fingers through the wetness there, and touches the tips of his fingers to his lips, and Mark sees the pink flick of his tongue, the shiny spot left on his bottom lip. He wants to kiss Luther and he's not even sure why. He can't read Luther's eyes, or his face. Alice passes him a cool washcloth from her overnight bag, and Luther gently wipes Mark's face clean, blots at his forehead and his eyes with the cloth. 

Alice touches his brow, his hair, while Luther touches his neck, his jaw, stroking their fingers across his skin. He sighs, and leans into their touch.


End file.
